&t The Taylor Family: May 2012

Wednesday, May 30

Free Chick-fil-a

I got a text from Chick-fil-A about Ranger Night at our location. It said any child who dressed up as a park ranger would receive a free kid's meal. Well Peter and I are not one to pass up free food, especially Chick-fil-a so we told the children about it and they got to work making costumes. We didn't have a whole lot of supplies but they each found badges changed their clothes to try and look like a uniform. Abbi decided she was a Texas Park Ranger so she wore her boots and cowboy hat. Javan didn't really know what was going on but he had a shirt that actually said "Bear Ranger" on it and then he wore some Cargo pants and his hat. Bresa used one of Abbi's guns and a nice star badge. She wanted to carry a stuffed animal but we have a thing about "toys at the dinner table". In the end Peter and I only had to purchase our meals and we all ate a nice dinner before we headed to church.

posted by We are the Taylors @ 10:20 AM   0 comments

Saturday, May 26

Mirror Mirror

I wanted to give Daddy some quiet time to himself today so I gathered the children (after they had cleaned their rooms) and took them to the dollar theater in Altamonte. We got a big thing of popcorn and some cups for water and then found our seats to watch the Snow White movie, Mirror Mirror. It was pretty good but Javan didn't want to sit still so I had to take him out of the theater a couple times so he didn't interrupt other's movie experience. The girls sat and watched the whole thing without a single movement. They were really captivated by it all. Between the four of us we devoured our entire tub of popcorn by the time the movie was over. I like taking the kids out to do different things, it's good for them to get out of the house and I know Peter appreciates some peace from the busy weeks.

posted by We are the Taylors @ 4:51 PM   0 comments

Thursday, May 24

Abbi's Play

Yesterday Abbi says to us, "I have a play tomorrow night at school." Thanks for the heads up girl. Good thing we didn't have anything planned. Abbi had to be at the school by 5 which means I had just enough time to get home and change before we headed out. The play was all about summer vacation and where the children would want to go. Each class choose a different location and then did a dance and song with that theme. It was adorable and you could tell the children worked very hard on their skits and were very proud of themselves. In the photo, Abbi is all the way to the right on the top bleachers. Her class did "the Animal Kingdom" and it was super cute!

posted by We are the Taylors @ 8:43 PM   0 comments

Saturday, May 19

Swimming

This morning we had to get up early and be at church by 7am for a Life Group Coaches meeting. The meeting lasted about 4.5 hours and we got out just in time for lunch. Peter had a client coming over but I didn't have anything to do other than the usual household chores. Joe and Jana had said they were going to go swimming and invited us to join them so I had the children get ready and we headed out. The kids had a great time swimming and I got
to talk to Joe and Jana. We were at their community pool and after I had been there only a little while our friend Adam come over with his daughter so the four of us sat and talked until Joe and Adam got pressured into swimming by the kids. Everyone had a great time and when JourneyKids (the children's Wednesday night church group) dismisses for the summer we plan on making this the new Wednesday night routine. After all the swimming fun had been had we headed home. Peter still had his client there so the children and I decided to go ahead
and make some homemade pizza. Peter had said he wanted pizza on the menu this week so instead of ordering out (way expensive) or buying frozen I decided to try something we hadn't done in a long time. All the children helped after I spread the dough out on my stoneware.
Bresa spread out the sauce and they all did some of the cheese. Abbi added the oregano and then we each child added the toppings they wanted to their own squares. We had chicken, peppers, mushrooms,
pepperoni, and onions to choose from. We baked it up and then ate the entire thing, it was delicious!!

posted by We are the Taylors @ 8:18 PM   0 comments

Saturday, May 12

A Day Out

Today we had tickets to the our last play of the session at the REP Theatre. We all got a few things accomplished in the morning and then we headed out to meet Michael and Angella at Jersey Mike's for lunch. We stopped at Grandma's
house afterward to pick up Javan who had been staying there all week long. We missed our little man and were happy to be getting him back. Mom had done some work in her garden so we went out back and took the tour. After we had seen all the beautiful things we headed to theatre. Today we were
going to see the Boxcar Children. It was a really good play and made me sad too. I had never read the book but I remember it from when I was a kid. We didn't get the Sonny's night because they only have that once per show and this one was while we were in China. So we left the play and headed to Christina and Noah's house where we were going to enjoy dinner and hang out. Javan apparently had way too much fun at Grandma's because he fell asleep
on the way over to the house and stayed asleep through dinner until it was time to leave. As always, Christina and Noah made a delicious dinner and filled us right up. We showed them our pictures from China and then just hung out and talked a while until we had to go.

posted by We are the Taylors @ 9:00 PM   0 comments

Wednesday, May 9

Design Thinking Fair

A couple months ago Bresa came home with a paper from school saying Bresa was invited to the Design Thinking Fair and asking whether or not she would be attending. This was before we had even left for China so we didn't want to commit to anything and didn't turn it back in. Well yesterday we had another notice saying the fair was today and asking again if Bresa was going. We talked to Bresa about it and what she did for a project and how she was involved in the group. We asked her why she wanted to go and what she would do there. Normally we would just take her but this was in Daytona which is about 30-40 minutes away and she had to be there just after 5 which means I would have just enough time to get home from work and change and then we would have to run out the door. Eventually, Peter and I decided we could all go and Bresa was very excited. After work I got home and changed and then we ran out. We found the correct building after a little bit of redirection and then looked around at lots of projects that other schools had brought. Design thinking is similar to a Science Fair but we were told that
that is not what it was. It seemed the same to me though. Design Thinking is open to only the gifted classes from any Volusia County School. There was a brief presentation and then the parents were told to go to one of the three labs while the students presented their projects to the judges. We let Abbi choose which room to go to and there were told that we had our own project to make. We were told that there was an empty lot in our neighborhood and we could put whatever we wanted on the land and we had to make a prototype of whatever we chose using some recyclables and other odd items then we had to present it to the rest of the group. Abbi decided that she wanted to make "Grandma's House because she lives too far away" so we set to work making a house, playground, swimming pool and garden just for Grandma. Everyone in the class thought it was great and very sweet. Afterwards we headed to the award ceremony where lots of kids received various awards for their work and Bresa's group received "Exemplary Articulation" for their Water Robot, a machine used to filter dirty water into clean drinking water.
Bresa's school received many awards that night and they were excited each time they got called. We are proud of our little genius girl. She is already thinking up ideas for next year's plan.

posted by We are the Taylors @ 8:51 PM   0 comments

Sunday, May 6

Chinese Food in the US

For some reason Peter was craving Chinese food, I guess he didn't get enough while we were in China. Earlier we had dropped
Javan off at Grandma's to have some fun during the week so we were down to just our two beautiful girls. We had life group after church and then on the way home I got pretty sick with a terrible migraine that made me nauseous. I really wasn't in the mood to cook anything and just wanted to lie down. Peter called in an order for some Chinese and he picked it up on the way home. When we got to our house I went straight to our room and got in bed with all my clothes on. I tried to stay very still with my eyes shut and Peter brought me some Tylenol and water. Normally I never take any medication, I usually just wait it out but I was
in so much pain I was very willing to take some tonight. Peter got the girls dinner while explaining all the Chinese foods and how to use chopsticks. I don't know that they had ever had Chinese food before this and they were very interested in it all and how to eat it with sticks. Peter told me that they did very well and I asked him if he had taken photos to which he said yes. Yay! After about 30 minutes I started to feel a little better and then after about an hour I felt just fine so I was able to enjoy some Chinese food too. One of the benefits to rarely taking any pain killer is that when I do my body tends to react fairly quickly with even the lowest strength medication.

posted by We are the Taylors @ 8:44 PM   0 comments

Saturday, May 5

Home Depot Workshop

This morning I had to run
to Home Depot to pick up a couple things. Bresa was busy cleaning her room or working on school work so I took Abbi and Javan with me so Peter could have a little bit of quietness. We got to Home Depot and I found a cool wheel that we could put on our play-set outside for Javan. I had wanted to get one for a while but always forgot when I came out this way. Javan was really excited about it and wanted to carry it around the whole store.
Next I needed to get a gift card for my mom for Mother's Day so she could pick out all the plants she wanted for her garden. I wanted to find a cool gift card but the ones at the front were pretty lame. I thought they may have something better in the garden center so we headed that way. As we were coming up on the center there was an area set aside with lots of children working on garden beds. They were building the beds and then painting them. Of course, Abbi and Javan both wanted to do this so I said they could and they got right to work. They both did a great job putting the beds together and
then worked really hard on painting them. We put them aside to let them dry a bit and then we proceeded to the garden area where we found the perfect gift card for Grandma. We picked up the children's project on the way out and they both showed them off to Daddy when we got home.

posted by We are the Taylors @ 12:46 PM   1 comments

Tuesday, May 1

Painting

Mother's Day is coming soon so I told the girls to make something nice for Grandma. Bresa asked if she could paint and I said that she could (knowing there would be a huge mess but wanting her to be very creative). Javan sat with me for a while while I messed with photos from the trip and then he wandered off. I came out to the
kitchen to find he had gotten a styrofoam plate and was "painting it for Gramma!" He sure was too. At one point he had taken a bottle of the paint and just squirted a huge glob on the plate and then pushed it around to paint. Oh well, that's why I buy washable kind. No sense in stopping him now, he was a having a great time and needed a bath anyhow. I am sure Grandma will appreciate her work of art created by our little man.

posted by We are the Taylors @ 5:03 PM   0 comments